Winter
by Sorrel
Summary: Sequel to Scenes from an Accidental Courtship.  Home for winter break, Cassie makes a few discoveries about her surrogate family. SamJackDaniel OT3 fic, season eight


**Winter.**

**-----**

This time, it was Daniel who picked her up at the airport. He hugged her like crazy, of course, and in typical Daniel fashion, grabbed her suitcase before she could get her hands on it.

"Sam's busy sabotaging the grill," he said, once they'd navigated their way out of airport parking and were on their way towards Sam's house. "Jack's coming over to grill steaks, and Sam doesn't want him losing any vital limbs to frostbite."

Cassie stared out the window at the dull slate-gray sky, slowly darkening as the sun started to give up the ghost. "Uh, yeah, probably a good plan. The weather report they gave when we landed said it's gonna snow."

"And neither wind, nor rain, no snow nor sleet will keep Jack O'Neill away from a grill when he's got meat to burn," Daniel said wryly. "I know. Sam's got a grill built into her stove, though, so he probably won't whine about it too much."

Cassie giggled at the image of Brigadier General Jack O'Neill _whining_ about indoor grilling- and it was even funnier because he _so would._ "Well, if he does, I'll get him to stop," she said, with the serene confidence of a woman who knows how to manipulate the men in her life. "I'll just start talking about all the _boys,_ and the _booze,_ and the _parties…_"

Daniel laughed and held up his free hand in surrender. "Alright, alright, you win. I don't want to know either." When Cassie sat back, triumphant, he grinned easily and said, "So how is college treating you, really?"

Answering that took them the rest of the short distance to Sam's house, where Daniel wedged his SUV in between Sam's little economy car she used when the bike was going through one of its frequent repair sessions and Jack's enormous truck. This time, she managed to get her own bag out of the backseat before Daniel could take it for her again.

Sam had to have been watching out the window for them, because she opened the door as they were coming up the front walk. Cassie smiled to herself at the sight of her, flushed and smiling in a bright red sweater that Mark's wife must have sent to her. She grabbed Cassie up in a hug as soon as she got to the porch, and Cassie dropped her bag and hugged her back, closing her eyes against the rush of memory and emotion that hit when she smelled Sam's familiar scent, a mix of strawberry shampoo and engine grease.

_This is home,_ Cassie thought. _This person, these people, this place.__ Welcome home._

"Merry Christmas, Cass," Sam said when she let go. "Now come on in out of the cold."

Yeah, that was Sam, the sensible one. They obeyed with alacrity, Daniel glancing over his shoulder at Jack's truck parked in the front. "I see Jack is here already. Did you get the-"

"Shh," Sam hissed, glancing furtively over her shoulder in the direction of the living room. "He'll hear you."

"Hey, Cassie!" came Jack's voice, and a minute later there was the man himself, standing in the doorway with his arms outstretched for a hug. She dropped her bag again and went over to it to him, letting out a startled shriek of laughter when he picked her up and spun her around. He always did that, and she was always surprised when he did, every single time.

"Hey," she said back, when he'd set her down again. "Merry Christmas."

"Gettin' there," he said with a grin. "We're doing the real Christmas Eve dinner thing at my place tomorrow, having Teal'c over and all, but he's offworld with Ry'ac and Ishta till tomorrow morning, so tonight it's just family."

Cassie smiled back at him even as she wondered at his phrasing. She adored Jack, always had, and he'd always been an affectionate, paternal presence in her life, but he'd also always been more interested in spoiling her than raising her. Sam and her mom had always been there for her, and after the whole, coming-of-age, developing-powers-that-almost-killed-her debacle, Daniel had joined the ranks of surrogate parents, but until today, it wouldn't have occurred to her that Jack considered her family. And while she knew he cared about his team, more than he was probably supposed to (especially since they technically weren't his team anymore, not that that would stop him) she wouldn't have thought that he considered Sam and Daniel his family.

"Why don't you go ahead and drop your stuff off in the guest room," Sam suggested. "Daniel made the snacks earlier; they're ready to go in the kitchen."

"Kitchen?" Cassie repeated. Usually they hung out in the living room with their snacks while dinner was being cooked. Daniel got cranky when people asked him if the food was done yet every forty seconds. Not that she would know anything about that, of course.

Jack looked sheepish. "The damn grill wouldn't work. I had Sam take it apart."

"In the living room," Sam added with asperity. Out of the corner of her eye, Cassie saw Daniel bravely battling back a smile. "At least he put a sheet down first, even if he did pull it off the bed."

"The guest bed!" Jack defended himself.

"Which isn't much of an improvement, since Cass needs that bed," Sam told him. "Cassie, just grab a sheet out of my closet when you drop your bag. I don't think you want the old one back."

Cassie didn't think so either, not if it had grease-and-char-covered grill parts sitting on it. She left Jack to explain why it had seemed like a good idea at the time, and went to drop her stuff and look for the replacement sheet.

It was weird, she thought as she rummaged through Sam's closet. She'd never heard Jack call Sam anything but Carter or Major before. She would have said the opposite was true, but now that she was thinking about it, Sam had been calling him Jack instead of the Colonel for a while now. Odd, and odd that she hadn't noticed till today. She was on the phone with Sam often enough, especially when she'd stayed in Portland over the summer and studied through Thanksgiving break.

Emerging from the closet (which Sam _really_ need to clean out) Cassie noticed that Sam had gotten a new bed. It was king-sized, an upgraded from her old queen, and sitting right in the middle of the room.

Heh, Cassie thought with a smirk. Daniel must be a serious bed-hog.

On her way back to the kitchen, she detoured through the living room to check out the mess. And yeah, there was the poor dismantled grill, lying in sad little pieces all over a big white sheet, but more important, in Cassie's opinion, was what wasn't there.

"Hey," she said when she went into the kitchen. "Sam. Where's your tree?"

"I didn't get one this year," Sam said, as calmly as if she hadn't practically declared the sun didn't rise in the East. "Daniel didn't either." Further blasphemy! "Since we're all having Christmas together at Jack's house, we just got the one, and decorated it with all our stuff."

Weird, Cassie thought. It wasn't just the idea of them sharing a Christmas tree, because they were all crazy, and they'd done a lot weirder things together. She still vividly remembered that time Teal'c had told her about the time Jack had taken him to see jello wrestling, because it was a _disturbing_ memory. It was just that she couldn't really picture the three of them actually _decorating_ the tree together. Try as she might, the visual wouldn't come.

"Does that mean my presents are over there?" she asked, changing the subject a little.

"Bet your ass," Jack fired back. "Means you can't go poking around and trying to figure out what's in 'em, not this year."

Cassie grinned. She had a statistically improbably ability to figure what was inside a wrapped box, just by the size, shape, weight, and rattle factor. After the temporary powers thing, Jack had joked that she'd gotten x-ray vision, but the joke was on him when Cassie, despite the lead lining he'd somehow gotten into the packages, had still figured out half the gifts.

"You're just worried I'd get it right," she teased.

Jack scoffed, just like he did every year. "No way," he said. "I'm not giving you a head start, but you'll get plenty of time at them tomorrow night. You're not going to win this time."

"Care to place a small wager on that?" Cassie challenged.

"Hey now," Daniel said, from over by the stove. "Don't you think this is taking things a little far?"

"Oh no," Jack said, the light of battle in his eyes now. "I think we're going just far enough. How much you'd say, twenty bucks?"

"Only twenty?" Cassie said, going for the eyebrow arch. Jack hated having an eyebrow arched at him. "Not so confident in your wrapping skills now, are you?"

"C'mon, you two," Sam broke in. She'd been watching the back-and-forth with the same sort of fascination Cassie had seen her turn at engines and ridiculously long math problems. "This is getting a little ridiculous."

Jack ignored her, always a fatal mistake. "Fifty."

"Hey," Sam said, a little louder. "What did I say about betting in my kitchen?"

Jack turned and blinked at her. "I don't remember you saying anything about it."

She gave him a look. It wasn't quite a Look-with-a-capital-L, and it definitely wasn't the eyebrow, but it wasn't a look Cassie had ever seen her give someone. Daniel maybe, once or twice, when he'd rambled off to far into his own world, but definitely never Jack.

Jack immediately backpedaled. "But of course, if I could remember it, it would probably be something along the lines of 'don't.'"

"That's right," Sam said, and touched his shoulder, lightly. There was something tense about the motion, like she was imbuing it with more meaning that it really deserved, and Jack was giving her a look back that was caught somewhere between a smile and a frown. Cassie wondered at it, and she couldn't quite figure it out. Daniel was banging pots or something, and it was distracting, but Cassie knew that if she could just think for a moment, she'd figure out what-

And of course, that was when dinner was served.

**-----**

She figured it out, later, after dinner was over and the three grown-ups had gone off to wash dished while she played on the Xbox in the living room, what she hadn't quite been able to grasp earlier. It started when she realized that yes, she was playing on an Xbox, and it was in Sam's house, who had stated, more than once and quite firmly, that she had no use for the things. Daniel could probably have put it there, if he actually cared enough to play, which he didn't. That left Jack.

Everything fell into place after that. The odd use of the first names. The bed being moved to the middle of the room when it used to be against the wall, because neither Sam nor Jack would want to sleep where they couldn't roll out of bed, though Daniel wouldn't care. The freaking Christmas tree, tying right into Jack's mention of family- and the look, oh, that look that passed between Jack and Sam. The touch she'd witnessed, tense not because it really meant anything, but because Sam had done it in front of Cassie, and Jack both happy about it and worried about Cassie seeing. And Daniel, happily oblivious as always, unaware of the byplay that was going on right under his nose.

Or maybe not so oblivious, she thought a minute later, when she heard the conversation in the kitchen go silent and tiptoed around the sheet and up to the kitchen doorway. Because there were Sam and Daniel, Sam with soapsuds all over her hands and a few smeared on Daniel's cheek, kissing each other like the world was going to end. And there was Jack, leaning against the sink less than a foot away- they were almost on top of him, really, and from the look on his face, he wasn't really complaining.

_Huh,_ she thought. _Daniel's not a bed-hog after all, then. The queen just wasn't big enough for three._

Jack happened to look up right then, and saw her watching. An expression kind of like panic crossed his face, quickly followed by the typical Jack O'Neill determination, and then by something like acceptance. He waited for her reaction, and was probably steeling himself for how bad it was going to be.

She grinned, gave him a thumbs-up, and tiptoed back out before Sam and Daniel ever noticed she was even in the room.

She went back to her game with the smile still lingering on her face. Yeah, it was weird. It had been weird enough when she'd found out that Sam and Daniel were together, adding Jack to the mix probably went beyond weird, now that she thought about it. But so what? Her whole life was weird. She was an alien, for crying out loud. They were family, and they were happy together. And it was almost Christmas. What more could a girl want?

Well, probably to know what was in those presents. But that was what tomorrow night was for. She could wait.


End file.
